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Monday, May 26, 2014

I'm doing what I always do when my Boy Scouts go on a week-long trip: I'm painting a room. This week they are at Sea Base in Florida, and I'm getting ready to paint the bedroom.

And like the mouse with the cookie, before I paint the bedroom, I have to paint the dresser. Before I paint the dresser, I have to unload each drawer, tossing some items into the give-away bag, some into a keep pile, and some things into the trash.

My top dresser drawer —the sock and underwear drawer— is the one where I keep little odds and ends of things that need to be kept, like the one little box with my original wedding and engagement rings. (You know, the ones that couldn't possibly fit on my finger after 25 years.) Another has all Jesse's Cub Scout and Boy Scout pins, another is marked "your bootee" in my mother's handwriting and holds a yellowed knit bootie. Mine, I guess.

There's a red satin pouch the holds my mother's rollerskate key and at least 5 ziploc baggies with baby teeth and one filled with blond hair. I don't know to whom this blond hair belongs, having had three blond babies, but I'm keeping that.

I found $100 in cash, about 300 random pennies, and the tag from the dozen roses that Randy gave me for our 10th anniversary.

I tossed out single socks, stretched out underwear, and more gift receipts that I could count. And I threw away most of the teeth. I mean, they're gross, and really—why am I keeping baby teeth? I found a sweet little card in my daughter's 5-year-old handwriting, a note from my mom, and my beloved uncle's obituary card.

And I was all business. I never even felt the tiniest twinge of melancholy—I swear I didn't—until that one little sock. It's just a plain white, stretchy baby sock, nothing special. We had dozens and dozens of little white socks for our three babies. We put them on their little sweet feet nearly every day.

You know those little, sweet baby feet? The ones with the ten perfect toes?

They get me every time, the memory of those tiny toes and fat feet. The way you take those feet to your mouth and kiss them when you change their diapers. The way they giggle and laugh when you do "This little piggy went to market."The way the toes curl and just how soft, how incredibly soft those feet are.

And that tiny white sock is probably the only one left out of all those dozens, and all three pairs of those baby feet are bigger than mine now. One pair is walking across the hardwood floor while he talks on his cell phone; one pair just drove to the coffee house to meet her boyfriend; and one pair is probably encased in fins, scuba diving in the Keys.

All those little feet.

That's what made me cry today, and someday I'll be sticking that little sock in a box, like my mother did with mine, and I'll just write "your bootee" on it. And my grown-up kids will laugh when they find it, because it says "your bootee." And I will probably get teary-eyed, remembering them as they are right this minute—at 21 and 16 and 13—, and how they were when they had little feet that wore white socks.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

As the school year winds down and hundreds of high school graduates begin to realize that they are really going to start college in just a couple of months, I am adding the last installment to my What College Profs Wish Freshmen Knew series. You can click on the link to the first in the series and then read the first five items on our faculty members' wish list:

All the faculty members at our panel discussion
emphasized the importance of being involved in college life. Mrs. B. said it’s
as simple as this: “You can live in your own little world or you can interact
with your campus.”

This can look dramatically
different from campus to campus. In our panel discussion, we ranged from a private
college of a little over 1,000 students to a community college to a major
university. Obviously, each institution has varying levels of opportunity for
participation in campus events: but there is something in which students can be involved on every single college
campus!

Research shows that students who are academically and socially
connected are more likely to actually graduate from college.

Interacting on campus has many
perks: leadership opportunities, resumé-building experiences, and friendships.
There are lots of opportunities that you will have in college that you can
never experience again.

Ms. B. emphasized that becoming
involved the first year of college can be crucial to establishing a foundation
upon which further affiliations are built. Look for ways to become involved:

·Participate
in campus-wide activities. All colleges have freshmen activities that are designed
to help you make connections. Don’t sit in your dorm room and wonder if you
made a mistake in coming to college. Make yourself branch out and meet people.

·Join a
club, sports team, or other student organization. Maybe this is something
you have been doing already, or maybe it is something completely new. College
is a time to pursue new interests and opportunities.

·Go to
performances, lectures, sports events, and other activities that your college
offers. You may never have the opportunity again to attend events for free
or for a student discount, so take advantage of all that your college offers!

·Look for
opportunities for community service. Volunteering will help you meet not
only students but also learn more about the outside community.

Join clubs, start clubs; expand your horizons.
Branch out and make new friends. Students will get more out of their college
experiences if they find a balance between academics and extracurricular
activities.

Parents, if you have a high school
student, now is the time to start gently preparing him for college. Help her
cultivate these qualities that college professors look for, and you will be
providing her with a fantastic foundation for college success!

Friday, May 9, 2014

This was a big week. I'm still recovering, or, rather, absorbing. Pondering.

Because this happened:

It is still hard for me to believe that our oldest child is a college graduate. It seems as if I was a college graduate not too long ago.

But, in fact, it was a long, long time ago for me:

I don't know sometimes if I feel much older than I did then; it's the whole "I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now" thing. I don't even know what it means, but I know exactly what it means.

I don't know how I became the middle-aged mom and not the teenaged sister.

I don't know how my child, my child— the one who used to insist on wearing gloves all the time for his "protection suit," the one who used to say, "You and Daddy are my best friends"—I don't know how he is on this list of graduates.

Magna cum laude, yep

A lot of people have congratulated me, telling me what a good job I did. You know, how as a homeschooling family, we have really shown what we can do.

But honestly, and I do not say this with any sort of false humility, I feel almost completely removed from his college experience. He did this. He worked really, really hard.

I mean, here's the truth: I read some of his papers and had no idea what he was talking about. He out-thinks me. Oh sure: I thought that hard and wrote that well when I was 21, but now my brain has mushified with years of parenting, and I think: W-O-W. He's really amazing.

I'm just really proud of him. Really, really amazed. I know we gave him a great academic foundation, but he built upon that foundation all by himself.

And so, our graduate is home now. And our daughter has finished her junior year and is now an official senior. And this one? This youngest one?

Prom consumed a lot of the past couple of weeks. Or months. After prom and the after-prom outing (Sonic), the girls' dates dropped them off at our house to spend the night so that they could get up early in the morning to do the Color Me Rad 5K. They were all questioning their decision to sign up for a 5K on the morning after prom, but they had a blast.

And they had all Saturday afternoon to nap. So did I, since I was their early morning chauffeur.

I love that co-op classes for K-8th grade are finished. So does Duncan, although he is taking one high school class. And I love that high school classes will be over on Monday!

But I don't love that, between my middle- and high school classes, I have 34 research papers, 34 creative writing journals, and 19 final exams to grade.

What was I thinking?

I love these last few weeks of our own homeschooling. Laurel will actually be done on Tuesday after German class, but Duncan and I still have a couple of weeks left. It is absolutely amazing how much we get done every day once all of his outside activities are finished for the year! We are finishing up the first part of his Sonlight World History program. We'll finish the rest next year plus add in a high school textbook. Because, well, unbelievably, he'll be in high school.

And my daughter will be a senior.

And speaking of seniors, tomorrow is a really, really big day.

But first, here is another ending.

Last night was the very last End-of-the-Year Awards Ceremony for these four girls. The three blondes in the picture above (Laurel is the middle one) have been in it since we started our troop 11 years ago.

That's them at our very first awards ceremony. I know. It makes me cry, too. All four of the girls (the brunette joined 9 years ago) are completing their Stars and Stripes Award, which is the highest level a girl can achieve in AHG (comparable to the Boy Scouts Eagle Scout). Laurel is now gathering her signatures, compiling her binder, and waiting on her Board of Review. We're nearly there.

It's not just her, though. Eleven years of my life have been committed to American Heritage Girls. This past year since "Saying Goodbye to a Decade of Little Girls" (i.e., the end of our 10 years as founders and coordinators of our troop) has been surprisingly lovely. I thought I'd be sad every time a Thursday came around and it was meeting time, but I really wasn't. We left our troop in incredibly capable hands with women who love these girls just as much as we do. It has been an amazing transition in so many ways.

And speaking of transitions, back to tomorrow.

This little boy? My firstborn?

He graduates from college tomorrow. Magna cum laude from Belmont University.

I wrote "Burying the Big Yellow Bus" for Simple Homeschool in the middle of his freshman year at Belmont. He was 17 years old. Since then he's grown up a lot. He has spent 2 summers working on my brother's farm in New York. He's driven across the United States, and he's spent a semester in Italy. He's written dozens of papers and received top writing awards at his college.

And now he's done, and he's coming home. I have no idea what that looks like.

His plan is to work at the airport for a few years so that he can have free flights anywhere. He just wants to travel.

I remember graduating from college and having only vague plans for the future. Like, maybe I would go to graduate school. Or maybe I would get a teaching job. Really, all I wanted to do was hang out with my friends.

I would not have predicted that, less than a year after I graduated, I would be married to the one I had given up on. {For the record, I don't wish that particular scenario for my son.}

The point is, the end of college is just another beginning.

Stay tuned. That's what we're doing.

And now, my daughter is heading off to her last Friday morning of her childcare job, my 13-year-old is awake and Otto of the Silver Hand is calling.